Radioactive mutants vs. Nazi Communists

[MinDonner]

They're riding a dead plesiosaur that they killed with a flare gun, and you're trying to use science? :stunned:

[lacuna]

Science! trumps all. It is known.

[Lord O' Bones]

Of course Rock has to dive down and rescue him, first knocking him unconscious (for his own good!) and then dragging him to the surface and somehow getting him to cough up all the water. Gogo super mutant lifeguard skillz!

This is more true than you might think.

They are still two miles from the shore in freezing water, but apparently the exertion of swimming keeps them warm enough to not die as they head for land.

However, this is ridiculous. 2 miles out, in Lake Superior, would have allowed them to die of the cold after exerting themselves a mile further in.

[Maithanet]

They're riding a dead plesiosaur that they killed with a flare gun, and you're trying to use science? :stunned:

I was wondering why no one commented on the flare gun incident. Even knowing all that I do about this series, I thought that he was going to use the flare gun to blind or disorient the monster, so that Rock could climb aboard and either steer it manually or kill it with the sword which is included in every Soviet jet.

But seriously? Doesn't Stacey remember how everyone in "The Breakfast Club" laughed at Brian for thinking he could kill himself with a flare gun? You'd be lucky to kill a tomato plant with one of those.

[MinDonner]

Chapter Two, and Archer and Rock stumble ashore, leaving Lake Superior's convenient tides to whisk the giant corpse back out to sea where it is promptly set upon by razor-beaked gulls and fish of all kinds. Night is falling, the temperature is dropping, and they are rapidly becoming coated with ice - time to find some shelter before they die!

After a mile or so they find a grove of trees with five-foot-long leaves, which provides shelter of some sort. No, they don't do a Lin Carter and start making themselves leaf-clothes, they just sit on the ground, but then luckily Archer remembers he has the means to make FIRE hidden in his crossbow (ie. a piece of flint) so Rock instantly gathers up a bunch of kindling and wood and they are good to go.

The cloudy night casts a deathly blackness like a shroud over the terrain (?), and they can hear the growls of hunting carnivores among the trees. They must make sure they keep the fire going all night, "Or else..."! Archer volunteers to take the first watch (yeah, you know where this is going) so Rock makes himself a nice comfy pillow of moss and dozes off.

Two paragraphs later, Archer is fast asleep also, and immediately things start to happen! Will it be the orange and silver eyes that were watching our heroes from the deep woods? Or the thing that let out a five-second-long screaming howl a bit earlier? Nope. It's the trees.

Yes, apparently these five-foot-long leaves are in fact mutated Venus flytraps, which only open at night and which for some reason decided to wait until their victims were asleep before opening.

Flexible as rubber, the dim mind of the tree sent out the command to kill through its chlorophyl nervous system.

It grabs Archer! Who screams bloody murder while fighting it off, awakening Rockson in time for him to dodge another attacking branch (it gets a mouthful of dirt instead). He grabs a burning branch from the fire and uses it to save Archer, then they both can start fighting back!

The two freefighters swung their flaming torches in quick circles around them, trying to keep the predatory flora at bay. The meat-eating plants moved slow, about five miles an hour, but there were nearly two dozen red-leaved jaws trying to get them and already the men were growing tired, as each darting red mouth came out of the darkness trying to reach them.

They can't keep this up much longer, so Rock decides that what they need is a perimeter of fire! He sends Archer over to a convenient dead tree nearby to grab a bunch of firewood. The deadly flowers swoop down on them in the darkness - they must be using some kind of primitive radar! (which also tells them when their prey has fallen asleep).

Somehow making this ring of fire is really easy, which comes as a great surprise to anyone who has actually tried to light real fires in the real world. They sit tight inside while the flowers flail about, some of them getting lucky and eating a passing herd of elk, most still trying, for some reason, to eat our heroes even though they're clearly awake now.

Anyway, at long last the dawn sun creeps into the grey sky on burning red legs (?) and the flowers retreat back into their trunks, and our fellas can at last retreat from the grove of trees. You kind of wonder why they didn't think to do that the night before. Cos, trees? Still, it's a long trek ahead, and the adventure gives the narrative another opportunity to eulogise on how awesome Rock is.

For Rockson was a creation of the new world. He was defined, chipped into shape, by its constant attempts at taking back the life it had given him. His strength, his abilities all rose to their peak by the sheer opposition of a cruel Darwinian ecosystem. It is through opposition, even the squaring off against death itself, that men raise to their heights. "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger" as the adage of Nietzsche goes. Those who couldn't make the challenge went under - fodder for teeth and claws. But the Doomsday Warrior welcomed the enemy - always. It made him feel fully alive. As a glowing ember sparks to life when blown upon, the stronger the wind the higher the flame, so Ted Rockson grew in strength, in power, according to the nature of his adversities.

They walk for a while, Rockson acquiring a handy wooden spear on the way, until he notices (rather belatedly) some storm clouds gathering, about to drop snow on them at any second! Oh noes, maybe THIS time it will be the deadly acidic black snow, that "ate all that it fell upon with wet teeth, dissolving flesh that shrieked in agony until all that remained of it was puddles of steaming bone"?

Nah, it's just regular white snow, hurrah! Cos that never killed anyone. And there is literally half a page of hippy bollocks about how beautiful snowflakes are (eg. "...a sculpture by a god who seemed to revel in giving mankind glimpses of beauty amidst the constant devastation") - Rockson's unerring sense of direction is quite good enough to lead them through the impenetrable snowfall with next to zero visibility as they get covered with beautiful white freezing flakes. But then!

There's a growl. It's some sort of cat. In fact, it's a ...pack? pride? herd?... of black panthers.

"I think this might be it, pal," mutters Rock, ever the optimist. The lead panther, you'll be pleased to note, is six feet long and a yard high at the shoulder, which doesn't seem right at all, but I can't possibly doubt Rock's measuring skillz. But before it can strike, there's a shout, and the cats stop dead, hemming the guys in ("a cage of black furry hide") but not attacking... who is controlling these beasts?

Rockson could hardly believe his eyes. Seven women - pale skinned, beautiful and nearly naked but for loincloths made of the shining fur of their predatory pets.

Yes. This is happening. Panther women in loincloths in the fucking snow in Wisconsin.

Obviously, they are beautiful and toned and have lustrous long black hair, smooth buttocks and large hemispheric breasts, and they are..... French??

"Donnez-moi votre weapones!" shouts their leader. And also "Les hommes sont moi!" (this is from some strange albino version, whose gaze is like a vacuum of lust and rage). So, not quite French. Perhaps the sort of French imagined by some dumbass author who has possibly seen one of the Pink Panther movies.

All the women look at Rock with some strange hungry lust, then our two heroes are bound hand and foot and led away to an uncertain fate.....

[Maltaran]

Maybe they're Quebecois? It would explain their mangling of the language.

[beniowa]

Malt, you're assuming Raydar even knows what Quebec is.

Uncertain fate? ;) Really? Rock and a bunch of half-naked women... :leer:

Perhaps the sort of French imagined by some dumbass author who has possibly seen one of the Pink Panther movies.

:rofl:

[MinDonner]

Chapter Three. The panther-women's leader introduces herself as "Reina" as she drags Rock through the snow, and her people are the "Kreega". Despite fearing some kind of cannibalism may be in his future, he still takes the time to admire her "abundantly female" form, especially as her loincloth keeps bouncing around and blowing aside in the wind.

Eventually they get beneath a canopy of some kind of trees, which not only keeps the snow out but also turns the forest beneath into some kind of warm jungle, like an "instantaneous hothouse". Yeah, I know. Apparently the rising moisture of the closely-packed trees keeps it all toasty and warm. Because... trees are hot-blooded now? Or more probably, because cannibal Amazon savages have to be clad in skimpy loincloths and live in jungles, them's the rules, even if the setting is the icy wastes of Wisconsin. Any snowflakes that get through are quickly evaporated by the heat of the surrounding jungle.

They also live in teepees for some bloody reason, despite not apparently being nomadic or having any other cause for not building proper houses. Not like Century City eh, where they can hew hydroponics labs out of the living rock!

Rock and Archer are brought into the largest of the teepees, where Rock struggles against his bonds while being subjected to more bad French.

"Desirez-vous prenez un bath?"

Obviously Rock can't understand NON-FREEDOM languages, so Reina has to demonstrate what she means, which causes her large breasts to swing from side to side, like lush ripe fruits waiting to be plucked. Rock finally remembers his one word of French ("Oui!") (and yes, the narrative explicitly states that this is the only word of French our hero knows - though how he knew they were even speaking French is thereby rendered a mystery), so Reina sends her guards out to prepare "un bath".

But then! The albino panther-woman (Ishtar) walks in! She again declares that "L'homme est moi", and there is a brief tense power-struggle between her and Reina! Rock is still kinda clueless about what we all know is going on, however:

They were obviously continuing their argument about just who would get the right to kill - or maybe eat them.

Reina, however, wins this one, and off goes Ishtar with the dire pronouncement "Vous etes morte, Reina. Je suis destroyez vous." :o

Now, bathtime. The steaming tub is wheeled in, and the women eagerly rip Rock and Archers' clothing off, then stand gawping in sheer awe at the manly spectacle. "...as if taking in the eighth wonder of the world", even! They even start rubbing and squeezing their own breasts! Rock, the dumbass, is still half-convinced they're about to be cooked up, but luckily these are just regular baths, not cooking pots, and all they get is a good soaping and a scrub-down.

And now for the boinking! Archer is grabbed and mounted by seven nubile young ladies all at once (they take turns riding atop his immense organ), but Reina wants Rock for herself.

For a moment he saw the image of Kim's face in his mind. But then it disappeared. A man must do what a man must do. Besides he was a prisoner.

Blah, soft breasts, trembling urgency, more scent of her moist sex (the post-apocalyptic parfum of choice), spearlike shaft, penetrated to her core, like a frantic jackhammer, screaming in French. Rock decides that this prisoner lark is something he could quite get used to. Two rounds with Reina, then she dismounts and makes him drink some dark blue medicine, and lets the rest of the tribe in to have their wicked way with the Ultimate Penis.

Rock wakes up the next day, understandably knackered, and with no clear idea of how many Kreega he had serviced the night before. And now it's time for Bullshit Potted History. Apparently over generations the Kreega had evolved to only produce female children, so were reduced to kidnapping men (mostly scrawny and pathetic ones) to fertilise them. And they also discovered that virgins had Speshul Powers and could control panthers. And that they worshipped the big plesiosaur (whoops) and fed the men to it once they could no longer perform. Uh-oh!

[Maltaran]

Apparently over generations the Kreega had evolved to only produce female children, so were reduced to kidnapping men (mostly scrawny and pathetic ones) to fertilise them.

It seems that we can add sex chromosomes to the ever-growing list of things of which Mr Stacy is ignorant.

[MinDonner]

Before we can find out the fate of Rock among the Wisconsin Amazons, unfortunately Chapter Four is one of those Russian High Command chapters that we all love so well. :stillsick:

First up, Vassily. No longer hiding out in the Kremlin, he is on a state visit to - wait for it - Berlingrad. Surrounded by statues of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, with Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background, he makes a stirring speech with a voice that sounds like that of Thor himself.

"Fellow socialists of the National Socialist Party, known here in the New Germany as the Nazi Party: I come here in friendship and fellowship to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the pact between the beloved socialist leaders, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin in 1943. Together they made war against the

ist state of Poland. Today, I call again on that eternal bond between our two peoples to unite to defeat another anti-socialist enemy - the American rebels."

Wait. What? I'm not even gonna go into the erasure of the battle of Stalingrad (1942-43), the Berlin Wall, NATO etc from history, and the sneaky fucking way that Stacy tries to make communism and Nazism look like the same thing. That, at least, is fitting with the book's overall propaganda theme and general knowledge failure. But what the devil is going on with this "160th anniversary" crap? We have been told time and time again that this is the world of 2089 AD (despite now being well into at least the second Springtime) - and even if he's just rounding up, 150th anniversary would be both closer and rounder, especially if he had gotten the correct date for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Have we suddenly skipped forwards 14 years? Or has he just pulled some dates and numbers out of his arse and not even bothered to do the most cursory factcheck?

The narrative briefly alludes to Vassily's "distorted history", but I can bet you anything that it's merely alluding to the statement about how the cruel Americans persecuted poor Hitler and drove him to suicide. Vassily also shares with Rock the ability to measure things, as he surveys the three-hundred-yard wide, half-mile-deep rows of Nazi brownshirts, flames leaping from ten-foot-wide, two-hundred-foot high pillars to either side.

By the "miracle of modern science", there's an animated Hitler face on a screen which appears to be mouthing along with Vassily's words. I suppose that would look like a miracle to anyone who couldn't even manage basic counting.

"There is one Fatherland, one Socialist world community, one master Slavic-German race," Hitler shouted, his jaw jutting forward in pride, his head bobbing and waving in fanatical zeal. "There must be one world, one supreme goal for us all: the extermination of the radiation mutants. The destruction of the mongrel races of America. The Fourth Reich will stand ten thousand years, a million years, a billion years!"

Ooh, but wait! Siegfried, among the brownshirts, suddenly has a vague memory of a book his dad showed him as a child, which said that the Russians were the bitter enemies of the Nazis! And that they had murdered millions of Germans at Stalingrad! But then his dad had been taken away in a long black car and never seen again, along with the traitorous book. So Siegfried just joins in with the cheering instead.

Now, this is kind of an interesting passage. Because there's no way that the Russians could ever be good guys, it almost sounds like the readers are meant to have a moment's sympathy for the poor Nazis. :wideeyed:

Our old friend Rahallah, of course, is properly appalled by all of this. After all his efforts to mollify Vassily into a benevolent dictator, and he goes and revives the Third Reich? Yes, apparently this gathering of 500k well-drilled Nazi brownshirts and the Thor/Odin/Hitler cult is something that Vassily has only just arranged in the last day since Rock left Moscow.

Rahallah ("with the blood of African kings pumping through his veins") has a terrible dream, where Vassily dies, Killov becomes leader of the new Reich and then kills Zhabnov with pokers. So, he tells this to Vassily, which puts him into a right panic. Oh noes!

Now cut to Zhabnov. He has had the White House covered with a climate-controlled dome, so that it's summer inside even when it's winter outside. Though I could swear it was springtime in the previous book. :dunno: He wanders round his rose garden and wonders if he will win the rose cultivation prize this year, while also pondering the delicious havoc that these new Nazi troops will unleash when they arrive on American soil. But if you thought we were going to get to the end of the chapter without being reminded of how he likes to rape innocent young American girls, alas, one of his roses reminds him of his latest acquisition, and how he plans to take her virginity tonight. Sigh.

[Lummel]

But if you thought we were going to get to the end of the chapter without being reminded of how he likes to rape innocent young American girls, alas, one of his roses reminds him of his latest acquisition, and how he plans to take her virginity tonight. Sigh.

So he's going to get scratched? And those rose thorns can really get caught too.

It's great that Min managed to write find another one of these - I love how Stacey gets bored by the middle of the book, but by the end he's excited enough to managed a bit of continuity into the next book. And there I was imagining that he would just pick up the story in Century City and forget about the whole escaping in a stolen plane from Moscow.

[Maithanet]

And there I was imagining that he would just pick up the story in Century City and forget about the whole escaping in a stolen plane from Moscow.

Totally, given the lack of continuity with reality, history, backstory and basic science, it is surprising that he would bother to make the books continue from one to another. I imagine it's just because he wanted to have the plane crash land in Lake Michigan and it's more heroic if it's an escape rather than Rockson just succombing to something crappy like poor aircraft maintenance.

Also, the Amazons worship the plesiosaur? This isn't highlander, there has to be more than one. Even Stacey's exceedingly shaky understanding of genetics has to remember that dinosaurs do not reproduce asexually. Also, those amazons sure picked a sucky living deity, that thing got killed by a flare gun. it probably needs the amazon to provide sacrifices in the form of pre-cut chicken nuggets, lest the beast choke on one of the bones and expire.

This story suffers from the worst Villain Decay / Worf Effect I have ever seen. Rock is so unfairly badass that nothing is even challenging for him.

Enemy is a hundred foot dinosaur and Rock is unarmed in freezing water? Don't worry, a single shot with a flare gun will kill it!

Rock is surrounded by half a dozen Soviet attack helicopters? A few shots from his handgun will inexplicably bring them down, because the Soviets build helicopters out of paper*!

A nuclear bomb is going off nearby? Well, he'll just climb a small hill and be safe from the blast (also fallout).

I'm hoping the final twist is that Rock is actually god. It would tie up a lot of loose ends.

*Even with paper attack helicopters, assuming they can fly and have machine guns, a handgun is nowhere near sufficient to fight one.

[MinDonner]

Chapter Five, and we're back at Amazon HQ. Rock and Archer's lives are "like a male dream of paradise" - all the roast pig and buffalo steak they can eat, and all the Amazons they can fuck. Reina always gets first go on Rockson (and second, and third, and fourth) before letting the rest of the tribe have their turns, though albino witch doctor Ishtar is still not allowed a go. This leads to much cursing in bad French - I suspect trouble may be a-brewing...

Evidently male dreams of paradise also involve being tied up all day and taken on walkies (on a lead) through the forest, but this allows Rockson to make plans for their escape. Will this involve merely breaking their bonds, overpowering their captives and making a run for it? Of course not, we need something FAR more stupid.

Deep in the woods there is a small wooden temple, for some reason covered with carvings of "melon-breasted Hindu goddesses" and containing a statue of the plesiosaur. This is where the Vestal Virgins live, who are of course nubile blonde 20-year-olds, protected from man-lust so that their purity can allow "le tribe" to control the panthers. Yes, guess what the plan is going to be. :rolleyes:

Archer is less than impressed with the idea of escape, as he's quite enjoying himself here. But Rock, on his walkies, has spotted not only the Virgins' Temple, but also a load of male skeletons behind the garbage pit. And the panthers drool every time they look at the two men! What the hell happened to the plesiosaur?

There's an interesting phenomenon in child psychology that shows the development of egocentrism and understanding of false beliefs:

The experimenter uses two dolls, "Sally" and "Anne". Sally has a basket; Anne has a box. Experimenters show their subjects (usually children) a simple skit, in which Sally puts a marble in her basket and then leaves the scene, leaving her basket behind. While Sally is away and cannot watch, Anne takes the marble out of Sally's basket and puts it into her box. Sally then returns and the children are asked where they think she will look for her marble. Children are said to "pass" the test if they understand that Sally will most likely look inside her basket before realizing that her marble isn't there.

Given that none of the Amazons have had a chance to determine (or even check on) the death of the plesiosaur, and yet somehow they already know that they now (and in the past!) have to feed their captives to the panthers, I think we can safely conclude that our author has a mental age of around 3. This would explain quite a lot.

Anyway, Rock and Archer spend the next several days winking and flirting with the virgins, driving them into a frenzy of lust so that they break into the captives' tent at night to make out with our heroes. But! Despite much nipple-stroking and whatnot, the men refuse to fuck them! The virgins get hysterical and run off in tears.

The plan was going to work. Sexual desire was the strongest instinct known to man - or woman. And Rockson was going to use it as a weapon to escape.

:dunno:

Speaking of sexual desire, Reina and Ishtar have finally gotten round to challenging each other to fight to the death over who gets Rock-boning rights. While the fight is being set up, Rock (his hands and feet bound) wriggles over to the temple (?) and invites the virgins back to his teepee to finally get the fucking they were after.

Soon, the Kreega virgins were experiencing the highest pleasure of life on earth - but they were no longer virgins.

Yes ladies, deflowering is the highest pleasure of life on earth. That Ryder Stacy, he wise in the ways of wimminz.

Reina and Ishtar, meanwhile, are all kitted out in panther claws and pointy stag helmets, and all the other Amazons are eagerly gathered round to watch this fight to the death. Now it's time for our guys to make their move! The ex-virgins are still dazed and happy from their "entrance into the world of women" (cos a good deep-dicking is what is required to make a proper woman, amirite?) and it's short work for Rock and Archer to tie them up and gag them.

Time to escape? Nope, not when there's a good bloody bitchfight to watch!

Two pages of lame Ishtar/Reina fightin action, then Archer (the big softy) kisses the ex-virgins on their foreheads before the guys sneak out. The ex-virgins now don't seem to mind that they have let down the whole tribe, because at least they have fulfilled their womanhood.

Blah, they sneak through the woods, blah, Reina finally manages to cut Ishtar to ribbons. Reina is undisputed queen once more! But then the alarm is raised. Les hommes sont disappearez!

Not exactly disappearez; Reina can still see them running through the woods in the distance. "Destroyez!" she screams. But the panthers no longer obey! Most of them just mill around snarling at each other and at the Kreega.

Two of the panthers, however, are well-trained enough to not need the telepathic virgins to control them, and they set out in pursuit. The leader knocks Rockson to the ground and is about to bite his jugular when Archer's last remaining arrow takes it in the throat and it falls immediately dead. But then the other one is on him! He stabs it several times with his knife, it bites his arm, he finally manages to cut its throat; panthers dispatched in less than a page (one long paragraph).

Luckily the bite is not serious, and he ties a tourniquet round his arm made out of a nearby vine. He is sad that he had to kill such magnificent beasts, but death does not see beauty or ugliness - all things are equal in the grim specter's dark eyes.

[Lummel]

It is noble, selfless and generous of Stacey to not merely teach us how to kill Plesiosaurs, bind up panther bites with convenient vines but also to instruct us men in the many mysteries of the women (note to self: virgins frequently dazed after first sex - gives excellent opportunity to escape being fed to panthers).

Why oh why are these books not required reading in schools? Does the school system hate freedom?

[MinDonner]

Not to mention how to speakez le French. :thumbsup:

[Maithanet]

So, how many times has this series resorted to the (trope?) of all-female tribe, who abduct men for mating purposes only? Three? There was that feminist tribe in the desert, and this Wisconsin panther tribe, and I think it happened one other time, although maybe that was just that tribe of hipsters, who had males members.

Maybe I'm not giving Stacey enough credit. After all, in this fully realized post-apocalyptic America of 2088...or 2098...or something...if one group of women is driven to adopt isolation and rape as their only male interactions, then why not several?

[Antonius Pius]

Good god... I absolutely love these threads, but it seems Stacy was getting progressively dumber and dumberer.

The hidden plesiosaur is revered by loincloth-clad beauties in snowwhite Wisconsin who use their virgin-telepathy to control black panthers. Summed up like that it almost makes sense... :bang:

[Lummel]

When I first read about the Black Panthers being controlled by attractive telepathic near naked french speakez I wondered if Stacey was trying to make some subtle political point.

But that would be really too fantastical in a book were plesiosaurs have rapidly re-evolved following a nuclear war but can be killed by a single flash from a flare gun.

[Lord O' Bones]

See, the thing is, Min isn't even reading them in order. Think about that.

[MinDonner]

The stupid is cumulative. Imagine if we got the whole Eva Braun Reincarnated thing now? It would seem like the most stupid thing in the history of stupid, totally eclipsing all that went before. But last year, oh how little did we know...